While doing my cleaning duty at our daycare I finally got around to listen to the .Net Rocks panel discussion on the topic “Has software development gotten too complex?”
The first thing that hit me was the fact that a lot of the panel members and the audience argued that there were too many tools and too many options. I understand how this can be perceived as an issue but it seems like an odd argument to me. What would be the solution to such a problem? Putting a restriction on the amount of tools that people are allowed to develop?
There are a lot of tools out there and picking the right one might be hard. But the truth is that you don’t need them all to produce good software. The problem might be that people are feeling an obligation to use as many tools as possible, or tools that are too complex in themselves for a particular problem.
The show raised some other thoughts as well. We’ll see if I get them down “on paper”.
The search for simplicity 
I agree. Funny how this attitude of “too many options” only seems to pop up in software. More mature areas of industry have solved it ages ago, either by standardization or by accepting the fact that you may sometimes have to start a new project by learning the tools; and if this is too difficult, you’re simply stuck where you are.
A nice real-world example of the latter is aircraft piloting. The basics are the same almost no matter which aircraft you fly (let’s not get into helo’s) but between different manufacturers and types (Airbus, Boeing, A320, 737, 747, …) the actual operations can vary ENORMOUSLY, to the point where training a pilot on a new aircraft type costs lots of money. Yet you see nobody demanding that all airlines in the world use the same model of airplanes.